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The dust
blew across the wreckage, already beginning to scour it clean of all markings.
Once they were gone, everything would be fair game, until then it was still
owned by some faction that would wipe out everyone in the caravan if even a
single part still bore some small remnant of whom it belonged to. Soon though,
soon it would be dismantled and whatever could be sold would be sold, and that
which couldn’t, well it would be used in whatever way it could. Almost like the
dust and sand which reclaims the mountains, the wreckage of the immense
battleship would be pulled apart by roaming caravans until nothing remained
except charred and blackened glass left by its impact.

“I don’t
get it, if they know it’s here… Why don’t they just come get it?” Ed wondered
out loud.

“Don’t get
caught up in why it’s still here, just be grateful that it is.” Lem replied.
“We could go another ten years without seeing a single scrap if another cease
fire is called.”

“Whatever,
there hasn’t been a cease fire or truce called in, well, since before you were
born old man.” Ed was tired of Lem always telling him to be grateful or stop
complaining; that was old Lem ever did was complain. Dust was always in his
eyes, parts were always never good enough and things were always better in his
day. Nothing was ever better though, and nothing would ever get better. Ed knew
it would always be constant wandering, from one crash site to the next.

“Come on,”
Lem said, “sun will be coming up soon and we don’t want to get caught in the
heat. Another day or two and this should be ready for the picking.”

When they
reached the caravan Ed found Mara waiting for him, he grinned when he saw her.
Mara had found Ed four years ago wandering alone in the wastes and taken him
into the caravan, he never left her side for more than a few hours after that
day. They fought like most young couples do, but against the odds and advice of
the caravan, Mara kept Ed around and they grew closer with the passing years.
Before long it was as if they had known each other all their lives and Ed was
as much a part of the caravan as Mara was.

“How is
it?” Mara asked. “Is there much left?”

“Nothing
has been touched so far, still some insignias left on the panels we need. In a
day or two though it will be clean, as for the inside, we won’t have to worry.
It’s huge so there will be a lot of good salvage for us.” Ed knew Mara was
anxious, they had already been in the same spot for a week waiting to get the
panels of the wreckage to begin building their own hut in the caravan. Ed had
already assembled most of the necessary framework for their own little home, he
even managed to come upon some reactor batteries in the last wreck they found
so the hut wouldn’t need to be pulled on crude wheels by the others.

Ed’s resourcefulness
was the only other reason he had been allowed to stay in the caravan, it was
also why he was cast out of his last one. Being the only child of dead parents
was never enough motivation to be careful for him, in fact, it drove him to
seek out thrills and take the risks that no one ever would take. At only twelve
years old he had already been established as the best scavenger in his caravan,
nothing about the giant ships that crashed into the landscape ever gave him
cause to fear. He would easily slip in and take what others had to wait days or
even weeks to find as the hulks where whittled down by passing caravans. It was
that recklessness that made his last home so afraid of him, not caring if what
he took was marked or not by any faction. But he had an edge that no one else
had, he could get anything he or anyone else needed in only a day or two.
Still, that didn’t stop them from throwing him out at fourteen.

“It doesn’t matter how resourceful you are
Ed,” Rol told him one day, “your
carelessness is a bigger risk than you are worth to us. Maybe if your parents
were here things would be different, but they aren’t. You have to leave, before
the sun rises.”

Exile for any man was a
dangerous prospect in the wastes, but for a kid, it was a death sentence and Ed
knew it. He wouldn’t let them win though, he wouldn’t die. Ed resolved on his
third day in exile that he would never let anyone hurt him so much again. He
spent two long years moving from wreck to wreck living off the rations he found
inside. Rations that most people never found because animals would carry them
off before the hulls could be pulled apart enough to find where they were
stored. Then Mara found him one day, when his luck had failed him and there
were no wrecks to salvage within days of walking and his rations would sustain
him no longer. He had been wandering the wastes for days at the edge of death
and she brought him into her small caravan begging to let him stay at least
until he was better.

Ed was
sitting on top of the rock outcropping near the caravan’s campsite thinking
about his past and how things had lead him to this point when Mara found him.

“Hey, come
have a seat. The sun is just about to rise and it will look amazing from up
here, I promise you.” As Mara sat beside him a light streaked from one empty
point to another, where it stopped a bright cloud formed. Soon there were
streaking lights and clouds filling an empty space in the stars and Ed reached
up and covered it with his hand. “Do you ever wonder what would it would be
like to be up there, in the middle of all those stars?”

“I imagine
it would be scary, always afraid of dying, never really knowing where you are
going next. Don’t tell me that’s what you want, to leave home and everyone you
know just to wander the stars.” Mara didn’t make it a question, it was a
statement, she didn’t want to leave the only life she had ever known.

“That’s all
life is right now, moving from place to place, wandering a bunch of emptiness.
Worrying about how we might die from some faction coming down and deciding to
attack us because they are bored, or maybe we don’t find enough food. And
besides, how well do I even know
anyone here. There’s Lem sure, but we butt heads as much as we get along. We
are cut from the same cloth, we are too much the same person to ever ‘just get
along’. There is nothing I’m leaving behind, not if you came with me.”